Prompt 8

She was petite, childlike in her demeanour. She looked lost, as if she weren’t entirely of where she was, or why she was there. Her eyes seem faded, seemingly unlit by some tragedy, by loss. What could it have been? Her youth was too fresh to have been tarnished that soon.

She seemed as if she had once known joy, there was still a shadow of a smile around her mouth, but too tentative, too hesitant to take its full form. Her freckles were subdued and, instead of dancing across her face, they lay still, immobile.

She kept touching her long auburn hair. Twirling its tips in invisible paths that only she could picture. She was nervous, untethered.

For a second, for a moment, she reminded me of myself when I was younger. But no, that couldn’t have been. What would have possibly made me that sad?